This isn’t how I thought it would feel.

Emily strolls the brick path, still dressed in the pink scrubs. She passes through bits of shade fashioned out of gold lamplight and rigging. There’s no bar music living in my chest, no smoky sexuality slithering through my limbs. There’s nothing to hold me down. Her desire is hard and sharp, and it hums high in her throat, a blade to slice things with: the heat from her body, her footfalls from the background noise of the water, one breath from the next.

The summer heat has come in, and the warm night air is woven of scent: peppery nasturtium floats on the honey scent of purple alyssum and bloody geraniums glazed with salt. She looks up through the muddying corona of light cast by the streetlamps, licking her lips. She tastes the omnipresent sea, adrift in tiny particles on the air. Cold tides nestle deep into her lungs. She looks up and down the row of cottages. Most of the windows are dark.

In the movies, a murder turns a woman out of her dowdy skin and transforms her. She jitters with need. Sometimes she becomes a leather-bound goddess, sometimes a harpy, a trailer park siren gone mad with lust. The thunder of her pulse rings loud in her ears, drowning out her old life. The release of blood releases her blood. She wakes up.

She gazes upon the flat mirror of the bay, lulled into stillness by the day’s lingering heat. The gentle rocking sound of water rises up and wraps around pilings, echoing between gleaming white hulls.

Were I a character in someone’s movie, right now I’d want a cigarette. I’d be the woman who traded in high heels or housecoats for something dangerous. I’d hold the cigarette up to my blood-red mouth, breathe in the bitter smoke, let it out in lazy curls. I’d do it and think…what? About how my anger broke through at last? Would I imagine it spreading out over the sea, holding it down? I’d be afraid of my liberation from the chains of morality; after all, once you’ve committed the primary theft, all other forms fall by the wayside. All of these things like helium, unfolding and expanding inside my bones, ready to lift me up.

Emily walks to the furthermost end of the jetty. She looks through dark branches at the broad bay, stretched out and calm beneath the black sky. She yearns across the somnolent sea with one ear turned back toward the land, waiting for the crunch of sand to awaken in her veins. She thinks of Aaron and the memory struggles through a red haze: here is her hand on the knife, surrounded by her open purse. The purse like a mouth, a woman holding a razorblade in her cheek. Here she is, rising up and down on the swift agitation of his breath, feeling for the trigger. The moment unfolds in her fingers, races up to her spine. The razorblade cuts her loose. How hard it was to make the blade break the skin; murder requires exceptional physical strength. She closes her eyes.

George is embedded in her mind, a map cast in skin. How simple to cut the cord and fashion a perfumed garden out of an abattoir. She never wanted the flowers anyway.

I want you. Dissembled words grow inside a bottle and drift, bumping up against walls of skin: I want you. A tide of breath goes out, comes in. I want you. I want you.

Footsteps ascend the layers of silence. A scuff of sneakers aches deep in her belly and turns over, tangled up in her roots. She feels naked on the path. Among the flowers there’s nowhere to hide; in the yellow light the closed are doors blank faces, the occupants behind chained in sleep. She looks at the water.

Emily thinks about making friction, shaping it out of breath, touching skin until it grows warm and starts to tremble. She wants to purse her lips and blow, making goosebumps, lifting dark hairs toward the sky. A salute to the heavens. The entreaty to God pulsing tight and hot though his hard cock. She doesn’t want to kill. The itch has left her hands. She smells the hot fecund salt stirring in the dark and waits for the footsteps to swell. She doesn’t want to kill, but she will if she has to.

If l lift my face and take a deep breath, his scent will take wing and fly across the distance. It will roost in my nose, climb down onto my tongue and awaken my lips. It will.

Emily pushes through currents of air, ducks beneath falling nets of light. She cracks the distance with a slender forearm, her breath running aground on the back of her hand. George stands beneath the shadows of branches. She touches his collarbones through his shirt, hot recurve thrusting up through sun-browned skin that she tugs down his t-shirt collar to see. She bends her lips to it, tastes the musky dark inside of him. His palms skim her shoulder blades. She carves a path up the side of his neck with the softness of her mouth. His hands are like wings on her face, drawing the mystery up out of her skin. His mouth drifts wet and soft onto her neck.

My life is a raft. I am floating, floating.

“Where?”

His fingers close around her wrists. “Here.”

Her hips lean into his, making a warm seal. His wrists cross over the small of her back. She breathes around the rim of his mouth, fingers get lost in the wiry marsh of his hair. His hands enfold her buttocks. She reads the curves in his facial structure with her fingers, the wrinkles soft, a day’s worth of hair harsh and scraping.

“We need to go,” she whispers. “Wherever we’re going.”

“What’s different?” He lifts up her face. “You’re different.” His nose slides along the crest of her cheekbone. “Tell me.”

“I killed Aaron.”

His lips move against her cheek. “Did you like it?”

“Yes.”

He walks with her to a slip. Docked there is a big white forty-footer, its sails furled like lilies against the dark. He helps her climb up. She steps over the rail, feeling her weight dissipate throughout the hull. He unties the bright yellow knots. She crosses the deck and looks out through the change in perspective: the glimmering water, the darkened boats afloat at the feet of painted doors. George tosses the coiled rope up onto the deck. He climbs up after it and winces, teeth flashing in the dark. He steps over the railing. Emily slides a hand up beneath his loose shirt, fingertips brushing the boundaries of the bandage.

“Does it feel like it’s bleeding?”

He puts an arm around her waist. “No.”

She looks up at him. “We should check.”

He moves his hand up her nape, gripping the juncture of head and neck. She folds her fingers over the waistband of his shorts. She lifts up her face and his mouth settles over hers. Tingles drift down her spine. She touches his jaw, rests her fingertips on his lips. He licks them.

“I love you,” she whispers.

He moves her hand, nuzzling the corner of her mouth. “I know.”

He slides a hand into her pants. She kisses him and pushes into his touch. He palms the arch of her cunt and she breathes hard, leaning her nose into the hollow of his cheek. “Am I different?”

His fingers slip, soft and light, between her swollen lips. She shudders and holds on.

“Yes,” he says.

“How?”

“Because you’re all here,” he murmurs.

She whimpers and puts her face in his neck. “We should go.”

“We should,” he says. “But there’s time for this.”

He takes hold of her hand, wet fingers tight around hers, and turns. They go below, down a narrow row of steps and into a low-ceilinged room. He turns on a lamp, and it’s full of blue tones and dark wood, a curved chamber like the inside of a heart. They pass through it, down a short hallway and into the tiniest bedroom she’s ever seen. The curved walls cradle a double bed that’s bolted to the floor. He takes off the shirt.

Emily looks at him. “I’m all here?”

He half-turns, looks at her with eyes that carve their way to her core. “Aren’t you?”

She nods. “Yes.”

He stretches out on the tight blue bedspread and holds out a hand. She takes it, listening to the muted shift of the sea, surrounded by it, and she lets the Crocs fall off her feet as she climbs on.

“You’re bleeding,” she whispers.

He looks down. On the bandage is a red stain.

Emily sits up. “Do you have a suture kit somewhere?”

“Yeah.” Pain flashes across his face. He rolls onto his back. “The bench cushions…they pull up. Under there.”

She slides off the bed. She pads on bare feet back into the common room and lifts up the segmented cushions. The spaces below are organized, filled with storage bins, each one labeled in George’s neat handwriting. She opens the bin labeled medical and finds the kit, its parts compartmentalized inside a red tackle box. She puts in on the floor beside her, takes out a dressing kit, and searches the little bottles of medications.

“I brought Vicodin,” she says, walking into the bedroom. “Here.”

She puts the bottle beside him on the bed. She climbs on and sits cross-legged, opening the kit. He watches her hands as they lay out the small curved needle, the forceps, the scissors, a length of heavy black line. She threads the needle and sets it aside. With delicate fingers, she peels back the edges of the white tape. The gauze lifts away from pale skin smeared in fresh blood.

“Looks like you popped two,” she says.

He watches her. “Have you done this before?”

Emily pulls the bandage off. “No.”

“I can do it myself.”

She opens a small bottle of peroxide and wets a pad of gauze, using it to wipe up the blood. “I have a better view.” She glances at his face. “I’ll do a better job.”

George pulls a pillow beneath his head and lays back. “All right.”

His incision is bruised at the edges, puckered by the sutures. She floods the site with peroxide. He sucks in a sharp breath. In the submerged quiet, sizzling bubbles mingle with the rhythm of his harsh breaths. She dabs the wound clean. His stomach rises and falls. She leans over it, squinting, and cuts the ruined stitches. She pinches them with the narrow curved tips of the forceps. He reaches down, caresses the back of her neck. One at a time, she pulls them out.

“You need to straighten the edges,” he murmurs. “Take the surgical scissors.”

She looks up at him and he moves aside her hair. He moves the backs of his fingers down the side of her face.

“You want me to cut you,” she says.

“It’s lacerated.” His thumb brushes the center of her bottom lip. “The stitches tore the skin and it needs to be straight.”

She blinks, nodding. “Okay.”

“It takes a lot of control.” His voice glides down to a whisper. “Be careful.”

“All right.” She wipes the blades with peroxide. “I can do this.”

She lowers her face and guides the tips of the blades close to the skin. She pats the wound, opens the blades, presses them to the skin so the ragged edge stands out against the metal. He draws in a tight ragged breath. She snips. The sensation is both soft and resistant. His sweat comes in fattening beads, gathering around the roots of his hairs. She cuts the other side and his muscles tighten. He grunts. Emily soaks up the freshening blood. The neatened incision is elliptical, a tiny cat’s-eye window into the scarlet depths of his flesh. She spreads her fingers around it and gathers the edges together. She hooks the needle beneath the skin. He bites his lip. She tweezes the needle through, pulls the suture up, loops the ends around. She tugs the wound closed.

“Fuck,” he hisses.

She ties a knot. “I’m almost done.”

He breathes hard. The warm sharp scent of his sweat rises into the air.

She moves quicker the second time: needle in, pulled through, drawn away from his pierced skin. His hands curl into fists.

“Almost done,” she murmurs.

Emily ties it, cuts the line, unrolls fresh gauze across the incision. She cuts lengths of tape, seals the bandage to his skin. She looks at him as she pulls off the gloves.

“Get us out of here,” she says.